It wasn’t numbness I chased.
It was stillness.
A break from the noise
that never turned off.
I didn’t want to forget.
I just wanted to breathe
without remembering everything at once.
My dreams used to come
like waves in a storm.
No warning.
No air between them.
Each night,
a horror movie I didn’t audition for,
written by the parts of me
I was too tired to face.
And when I smoked,
it wasn’t to silence the truth
just to muffle the screaming.
The irony?
Even then, I’d wake up
feeling like I hadn’t slept at all.
Heavy-eyed.
Head full.
Heart exhausted.
I wasn’t avoiding meaning.
I was drowning in it,
without a single name
for what it was doing to me.
Now, I look back
and hold that version of me
gently.
Because he was never weak.
Just overfilled.
And still,
he survived,
Even then.